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"Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start." Altogether now, Doe, a deer, a female deer, ray, a drop of golden sun....
Love it or hate it, The Sound of Music has been a musical phenomenon for 50 years, from stage musical to film, from cult gay Singalong shows (reputedly created in an Inverness old people's home), to a BBC talent series leading to West End and UK tour revivals.
Now we have a Fringe show about the people, backstage drama and future consequences after a production of the musical. Just like Maria and Captain Von Trapp and his troupe of children, this is a true story.
The audience is greeted at the theatre entrance by Tony, Michael and Vivienne Pinchbeck and offered a glass of Shloer apple juice. Welcome to the party! The plot of the play is about what happened on 4 December, 1970 when Tony met Vivienne at the post show party after they had both performed (playing a Nazi and a Nun) in an amateur production of The Sound of Music. It's all about fate, as Michael explains at the start, " If Tony had not been in the show, I wouldn't be here."
Father and son (Tony and Michael), dressed identically in brown shirts and black slacks, then proceed to re-enact the dramatic and romantic events of that party. Vivienne observes from the prompt desk, in charge of all the perfectly timed music cues. Against the soundtrack from the Julie Andrews movie, the narrative for the play echoes the lyrics of each song from "I have Confidence in Me" to Tony singing his oldie version, "I am 60 going on 70."
But this show is more than just a light-hearted comedy. Michael's aim in researching the story of his parent's first brief encounter, was to question their hazy memories of that night and the changing roles they played both on and off stage. Likewise Michael and Tony switch between real and imaginary people, playing characters in the musical as well as "acting" themselves, both past and present. Their professional skill at performing in an amateur manner without a trace of ham acting or send up, is a fine art indeed.
Sixteen brilliantly choreographed scenes are played out in an energetic blend of mime, dance, conversational sketches, song lyrics, physical theatre and direct interaction with the audience. With a touch of farce and crystal-sharp, intelligent wit, this innovative show is performed in the style of a Brechtian-inspired Morecambe and Wise double act. I had a permanent smile on my face throughout.
Edinburgh Guide *****
There is something emotionally affecting about seeing a fully grown man perform on stage with his real-life mother and father. Outside the circus or village hall, this is not something you often get to witness – and even in these instances it's rarely made into a narrative focal point in the way it is here.
The show tells the story of how Michael Pinchbeck's parents, Tony and Vivienne, met in 1970 at the final night party of an amateur dramatics production of The Sound of Music.
All three family members star in the piece in which past and present, fact and fiction are blurred together in a playfully self-referential way. It could be either horribly painful or truly brilliant. Delightfully, it's the latter.
Sixteen scenes take their themes from individual songs from the musical, including Climb Every Mountain, Maria and So Long, Farewell.
Within these numbers Michael (Total Theatre Award winner in 1999) and Tony incorporate dance and physical theatre, play with narrative structure, and tell us how the performance we're now watching came to exist.
There's a wonderfully facetious moment when Michael steps out of the action and asks us whether we think the narrative is too slow, too fast, too like radio or could do with more dancing.
Father and son portray all the characters, including the entire cast of The Sound of Music and each other, with a compelling matter-of-fact honesty. It's a very unsentimental, yet touching piece in which the importance of family is conveyed without ever being said. Vivienne is in the middle of the stage throughout – the central figure around which the action revolves – silently managing the sound system.
The show is essentially a celebration of the kind of seemingly insignificant moments that lead to monumental changes in one's life, as well as a tribute to the often unrecognised enjoyment that amateur theatre brings to those involved in it.
As Michael points out, if it hadn't been for a two-week run of a small-scale production in Lincoln, his parents would never have met, he would never have been born and we wouldn't be sitting here watching this show now – and there's something quite lovely about all of that.
The Scotsman ****
Michael Pinchbeck's parents met through an amateur production of The Sound of Music in Lincoln in 1970. Almost 40 years later, Michael's dad, Tony, still hasn't got over the frustration of only having one line to say: "Ulrich, block ze driveway." But the post-show party was real enough. A chap called Arthur, who had played the Baron, keeled over and died.
The death was real and so was the post-show party, but this re-creation of the party in 16 scenes (going on 17), using the soundtrack of The Sound of Music, is not, even though it features Michael and his parents. Mum played a nun in that original production, but she doesn't speak much here, except to point out that Michael and Tony have run out of ideas.
Actually she's wrong. This is a teasing, gently witty and entertaining piece about the shifting nature of reality, and it has no shortage of ideas. However, they are not always fully realised in a show in which the hills are alive with deadpan, self-conscious irony. More honesty and less clever layering would lend emotional ballast, as the people we are watching pretending to be themselves seem more elusive as every moment passes.
Perhaps there is something here in the ephemeral nature of performance and of life itself, and certainly in the way that Pinchbeck, now 60 going on 70, was younger than his son is now on that fateful night. But any wistfulness is crushed by the constant game-playing; in its current form this play is intriguing and rich with promise, but never quite beguiling.
The Guardian ***
As a performer, allowing your parents to join you on tour may be considered valiant. Michael Pinchbeck, however, strides one step further and has allowed his to perform with him. It might be an unusual concept for a show, but his family's background in theatre, as well as their dedication to turning their classic story into a creative success, make for a surprisingly engaging performance.
Through the medium of 'The Sound of Music' soundtrack, Michael and his parents take their audience on a trip down memory lane as they recall how they met and how Michael came into existence. While curiously intriguing and a walk further than the central venues, the closeness of this family makes for an amiably soothing outing.
Three Weeks ***
The post show party of CAODS’s 1970 amateur dramatic production of The Sound of Music proved to be a beginning for some (it was here his parents’ romance began) and the end for others (another actor collapsed whilst playing the guitar, eventually dying that same evening). His father was a Nazi, his mother a nun. His father only had one line: “Ulrich block the driveway!” Yet ultimately, had it not been for this post show party, Michael Pinchbeck would not be here, nor would he, alongside his mother and father, be recreating the events of that winter evening thirty years ago.
The Post Show Party swings back and forth between the past and present, to the soundtrack of The Sound of Music. Memory, nostalgia and personal emotions are central, with Pinchbeck often halting his father in his tracks and questioning “where were you standing? What were you thinking?” A vivid sense of place is aroused as the father and son pair intricately move chairs on the stage, and weave between the characters in the musical, and themselves both past and present. The repetition of the guitar playing thespian falling off the chair and onto the floor in slow motion is a particularly clever motif that runs throughout the play.
The idea behind the play is a beautifully construed one but it was oddly stifled in its execution, seeming at times overindulgent and at others disjointed to the point of distraction. Well portrayed sentiment, but somehow unsatisfying.
Edinburgh Festivals Magazine ***
Michael Pinchbeck’s ‘The Post Show Party Show’ is a family affair, performed by Pinchbeck and his dad (in identical brown shirts and black slacks), with mum manning the sound desk for a sort of heavily stylised dwelling upon the night his parents met. It was an eventful evening: an after party for a production of ‘The Sound Of Music’ they both had minor roles in, at which one of the actors suffered a heart attack and died. Set in real time to the musical’s soundtrack, each song effectively delineates the boundaries of a little vignette performed by the Pinchbeck men. These run all the way from charming and adorable, with cutesy choreography, a mountain made of stools, and a good measure of lip syncing all making appearances.
As it goes on, the tone becomes more contemplative, the heart attack constantly returned to, Pinchbeck Jnr musing on how he is on some level a continuation of these events. It also gradually runs out of steam. The use of the soundtrack wears thin after a while, and though repetition might be important to the structure, it still feels like Pinchbeck might have benefited from not having to come up with a segment to accompany every song. It’s also odd how it shies away from details about his parents’ meeting. Maybe the point is about the sensation of dwelling upon a moment rather than anything more personal, but I still left thinking that despite being onstage for the duration, the senior Pinchbecks were somewhat underused.
Time Out ***
Had the hills never been alive with the sound of music, Michael Pinchbeck would not have come to be. At least, Michael Pinchbeck would not exist had the County Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society not performed The Sound of Music in November 1970. His father was a Nazi and his mother a nun. His father had one line: “Ulrich, block ze drive-vay.” His mother, it seems, had none. One assumes that it did not make for particularly convincing theatre. Yet as the result of such pretence, something real occurred. For it was at the post show party – just after Arthur Hunter (a guitar-playing Nazi) had keeled over – that his mother and father first kissed.
And so, in 2009, Michael Pinchbeck, 32, takes to the stage with Tony Pinchbeck, sixty going on seventy, to recapture something of that past. Having set the film’s soundtrack in unstoppable motion, the pair work their way through sixteen songs, alternately half-dancing, half-acting, half-re-enacting and lipsyncing. They move stools around the space like checkers and deliver meditative lectures on present and past, absence and presence in the solemn whispers of nature commentators.
For all its pensive contemplation, however, The Post Show Party Show is dragged down by the clumsiness of its meta-theatrics. Pinchbeck seems in so love with the duality of which the stage is capable that he skirts the issue with a mumble where philosophic oration is needed. The absent echoes of 1970 never materialize and, as such, multiplicity collapses into flat monochrome.
Undoubtedly, Pinchbeck shows promise. He handles text with a deft turn of phrase, careful use of repetition and a smidgen of absurdity, but lacks the requisite gutsiness to nail any particular point. The result teeters between the whimsical and the arbitrary. With tightening, volume and some rigorous reflection, The Post Show Party Show could blossom. As it is, however, it lacks the punch to spike.
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